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Thread: John William King - Texas Execution - April 24, 2019

  1. #81
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    The Warden of the Huntsville Unit is now Billy Lewis who took over James Jones in January.
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    Scotus denied
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  3. #83
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Ted's Avatar
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    According to Twitter, King died at 7:03pm.
    Violence and death seem to be the only answers that some people understand.

  4. #84
    Senior Member Frequent Poster joe_con's Avatar
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    Wow, no flurry of appeals. This has been one of the smoothest executions in recent years.

  5. #85
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    Texas executes John William King in racist dragging death of James Byrd Jr.

    It’s been more than two decades since an infamous hate crime in East Texas, where three white men were convicted of chaining a black man to the back of a pickup truck, dragging him for miles and then dumping the remains of his body in front of a church.

    On Wednesday evening, John William King, 44, became the second and final man to be executed in the 1998 murder case of James Byrd Jr. Lawrence Brewer was put to death in 2011 for the crime, and Shawn Berry is serving a life sentence.

    King had previously been involved in a white supremacist prison gang, and he was notoriously covered in racist tattoos, including Ku Klux Klan symbols, a swastika and a visual depiction of a lynching, according to court documents. But King maintained that he was innocent in Byrd’s murder — claiming that Berry dropped him and Brewer off at their shared apartment before Byrd was beaten and dragged to death.

    In a last-minute appeal, King’s attorney argued that a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling entitled his client to a new trial because his original lawyers didn’t assert his claim of innocence to the jury despite King’s insistence. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals narrowly rejected this appeal in a 5-4 ruling Monday, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against stopping the execution about 30 minutes after it was scheduled to begin Wednesday.

    Shortly after 6:30 p.m., King was taken from a holding cell and placed on a gurney in the death chamber and hooked up to an IV. He had no personal witnesses at his execution and spoke no final words, but he did provide a written statement beforehand, stating "Capital Punishment: Them without the capital get the punishment."

    He was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital, and pronounced dead at 7:08 p.m.

    Two of Byrd’s sisters and his niece planned to watch King's death. One of the sisters, who also watched Brewer's execution in 2011, told The Texas Tribune Tuesday that she didn’t understand why King’s case was tied up for so long with numerous appeals. He was sentenced to death in February 1999.

    “He wants to find a way not to die, but he didn’t give James that chance,” said Louvon Harris. “He’s still getting off easy because your body’s not going to be flying behind a pickup truck being pulled apart.”

    Byrd’s brutal murder drew a spotlight on the small town of Jasper and violent racism in the modern world. Evidence at trial showed police found most of the 49-year-old’s body on June 7, 1998, with three miles of blood, drag marks, and other body parts — including his head — on the road behind it. At the beginning of the gruesome trail, police found evidence of a fight, Byrd’s hat and cigarette butts later tied to King, Berry and Brewer, according to court documents. The three men were arrested shortly afterward.

    Though King didn’t give an official statement to police or testify at his trial, he wrote a letter to The Dallas Morning News while awaiting trial proclaiming his innocence, saying Berry knew Byrd from jail and stopped the truck to pick him up after seeing Byrd walking down the road. King told The News that Berry then dropped him and Brewer off before leaving with Byrd alone.

    But in a jail note written to Brewer, he said he didn’t think his clothes police took from their apartment had blood on them, but his sandals may have had a “dark brown substance” on them.

    “Seriously, though, Bro, regardless of the outcome of this, we have made history and shall die proudly remembered if need be…. Much Aryan love, respect, and honor, my brother in arms,” King wrote, according to a court filing.

    Still, King maintained before and through his trial that he wanted to argue for his innocence and unsuccessfully complained to the court when he said his attorneys refused, his current lawyer, Richard Ellis, said in his latest appeals. King claimed that because his attorneys instead conceded his guilt in the murder, a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling should have allowed him to get a new trial.

    In Robert McCoy’s case out of Louisiana, the high court held last year that a defendant has the right to choose the objective of his defense — so trial lawyers can’t concede guilt if the defendant wants to assert innocence. King said his lawyers didn’t assert his innocence, instead largely focusing on whether the murder could be considered death penalty eligible.

    The Jasper County District Attorney’s Office knocked the appeal, saying in a brief that King pleaded not guilty and his lawyers, unlike McCoy’s, didn’t concede guilt but were “substantially limited” based on the given physical evidence, his letter to The News and his jail note to Brewer.

    “Counsel could not create evidence where none was available, and counsel’s failure to manufacture exculpatory evidence where none existed is not equivalent to a ‘concession’ of guilt,” wrote Sue Korioth for the prosecutor’s office.

    The Court of Criminal Appeals tossed King’s appeal Monday without reviewing its claims based on its late timing, but two judges wrote short concurring opinions and four signed on to a dissent. Judge Kevin Yeary agreed with the court’s rejection, arguing there was no indication that McCoy’s ruling would apply retroactively to King’s case. And Judge David Newell said in his opinion that King’s case is different from McCoy’s, and noted that King had already made a similar argument against his lawyers that was recently rejected by the Supreme Court.

    Judge Michael Keasler, however, joined by Judges Barbara Hervey, Bert Richardson and Scott Walker, said he would have stopped the execution, noting that his court has recently been admonished by the high court for unsuccessfully implementing another one of its rulings in the death penalty case of Bobby Moore.

    “In light of this Court’s recent earnest, but ultimately unsuccessful, attempts to implement new Supreme Court precedent in death-penalty cases, and especially in light of the horrible stain this Court’s reputation would suffer if King’s claims of innocence are one day vindicated... I think we ought to take our time and decide this issue unhurriedly,” Keasler wrote.

    The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the appeal stemming from the Texas ruling without any opinion. King’s lawyer, Ellis, also raised the McCoy case in an appeal shortly before another Texas execution this year, but the courts also decided against Billie Coble, who was executed in February.

    Before the execution, Harris said King's death would bring her some closure, but she will still have to be involved in Berry’s case as he becomes eligible for parole in 2038. And though some hate crime laws were passed in Byrd’s name after his murder, she still dedicates herself to fight against racism in the country in her brother’s name.

    “As long as there’s still hate in America, we still have a job to do,” said Harris, who serves as the president of The Byrd Foundation for Racial Healing.

    https://www.texastribune.org/2019/04...ng-james-byrd/
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

    "When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row

  6. #86
    Senior Member Frequent Poster joe_con's Avatar
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    1999_WL_34865587.pdf

    Jury Instruction

  7. #87
    aclay
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    Rest in Hell. Glad he's gone.

  8. #88
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Houston state senator demands end to reading of killers' last statements after they're executed

    A Democratic state senator from Houston is demanding a change to the Texas prison system's execution-day procedures, arguing that allowing the reading aloud of a condemned killer's statement after his or her death is "disrespectful" to victims' families.

    Prompted by last week's execution of white supremacist John King -- one of the men sentenced to die for the notorious hate-crime slaying of James Byrd Jr. -- state Sen. John Whitmire on Monday called on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to end the policy of a prison spokesman reading aloud prisoners' written statements after they are put to death.

    The request marks the second time that Whitmire has demanded a policy change following the execution of one of Byrd's killers. Eight years ago, the senator urged the prison system to end the practice of allowing condemned prisoners to order last meals after Lawrence Brewer put in a massive final request and ate none of it.

    Now, Whitmire is arguing that the condemned killer's only chance to weigh in with final thoughts should be any last words uttered while inside the execution chamber.

    "If a death row inmate has something to say to the public or victims, let him or her say it while they are strapped to the gurney," Whitmire wrote, adding that he was "shocked" to see King's written statement quoted in the media. "I believe this action was totally improper and should never be repeated."

    The prison system has not yet commented on Whitmire's latest request.

    Traditionally, death row prisoners are permitted to say their last words inside the death chamber, and also provide a written statement that a department spokesman may read aloud to the media at a press conference afterward. Whitmire isn't seeking to ban final spoken words, but instead demanding an end to the reading of written statements.

    On top of that, he asked for an examination of the death-penalty appeals process and a look into how King was able to linger on death row for two decades before his execution.

    "I intend to ask Lt. Governor (Dan) Patrick to authorize an interim study of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee to review how someone like Mr. King could be on death row for 20 years," Whitmire wrote. "It is entirely too long and not fair to the Byrd family and to the State of Texas."

    The Jasper killer was sentenced to die as one of three white men involved in the gruesome modern-day lynching, when Byrd was chained to a pick-up truck and dragged to death on a country road, then left for dead in front of a black church. The murder helped fuel the passage of federal hate crime legislation named for the slain black man, but it also eventually led to a change in execution-day protocols.

    Before he was put to death, co-conspirator Brewer ordered two steaks, a triple-patty bacon cheeseburger, a cheese omelet, fried okra, a pound of BBQ, white bread, fajitas, pizza, Blue Bell ice cream, fudge, and and three root beers.

    It was, at the time, standard for prisoners to request a special meal before their execution - and some states still allow it. But when Brewer refused to eat any of the vast order, Whitmire penned a letter to then-executive director Brad Livingston calling the practice of special last meals "ridiculous" and demanding an end to it. Texas prison officials complied, and since then condemned men can only eat what's on the mess hall menu for the day.

    https://m.chron.com/news/houston-tex...t-13804159.php
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  9. #89
    Senior Member CnCP Addict one_two_bomb's Avatar
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    A step in the right direction, for sure! Anything to get these lowlifes less attention.

  10. #90
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    I’m not surprised he made no final statement in the execution chamber, his co-defendant didn’t, either. They never explained why they did what they did or what happened that night, but I’d be willing to bet alcohol was involved.

    His written final statement is somewhat true, IMO, but not really for his case, bc his crime was so offensive, brutal and high-profile, I think he woulda gotten the DP no matter what.

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